One of the biggest content marketing challenges facing business owners right now appears to be lack of time to come up with the content. Even if business owners are well aware of the benefits of strategic content marketing, they may feel that they just don’t have the time to commit to it properly.

In fact, in research from TechValidate, 42% of survey respondents said it took from 2 to 5 weeks to produce one piece of content, and 13% said it took as much as 10 weeks! This may not always refer to actually creating and producing content, but also of getting it approved by senior staff or stakeholders.

Why the time problem?

It is probably more likely than anything to be a matter of conflicting priorities. As mentioned above business owners may be aware of the benefits of content marketing, but also feel they are just too busy running their businesses or meeting client needs to feel they have time for it. It might be seen as something that can be done ‘later’ – and then involve dashing off a blog post at midnight, or writing the odd article when they have a little spare time on the weekend.

But content marketing involves a lot more than this. It really requires a proper commitment in terms of time and resources, and having a sound content strategy and plan in place.  It won’t work well if it is seen as just an ‘add-on’ to existing marketing plans – it needs to be properly incorporated into overall strategies. The results that can be obtained when a committed, organised approach is take are very worthwhile, so it could pay to make your content a fairly high priority.

Get the basics right

Before we talk about time-saving tips it’s important to start with the basics, which are:

• Knowing your audience well – what they need, what they are interested in and so on.

• A plan of action – you know what you want to achieve and why. Simply producing articles and sending them off in to cyberspace won’t get you very far.

• An audience-focussed approach – your audience wants to know what’s in it for them. They are not that interested in your skills at video-making (unless they’re getting your to produce their video) or how great you are at snowboarding, so always make it about them.

• Consistency – a major key in all this! The odd bit of content followed by nothing for months can look like you don’t really care, or that you are unprofessional or poorly organised.

Now we have that down we can get onto the time savers!

Time saving ideas

• Make use of time-saving and organisational tools, such as editorial calendars, or Buffer for Business or Hootsuite.

• Consider involving other people in your business in the process. There may be many skilled people among your workers or volunteers who have something to offer. Invite them to contribute content they think could interest your audience.

• Generate ideas for blog posts from Google Alerts, industry publications and other sources. You can find more tips on this here.

• Reuse your most popular content. For instance you could transcribe a video you have made, or do the reverse and make a video, infographic or SlideShare from an article. You could also package popular blogs into an ebook or webinar.

• Get more mileage from your content by amplifying it. Creating it is not enough – make sure to distribute it through social media, make it into a presentation, include it in your next newsletter, and so on. Content gains more traction when it is widely shared.

• Share content you find from other people that you feel will benefit your audience – for instance articles from major influencers or business gurus.

• To really save time, hire professional content writers or blog writing services to do the work on your behalf. And if you’re struggling to use an automated marketing platform, look for an inbound marketing service to assist you.

In reality, the time issue can in many cases be resolved simply through better organisation. By having a plan of action, a commitment to content marketing and by making use of time-saving tips, you should be on your way to producing great quality and consistent site content in no (well, almost) time!